


What If's

by andysbrandy



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:03:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andysbrandy/pseuds/andysbrandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen Rutherford is not the man he used to be, but when the Hero of Ferelden shows up at skyhold to find Alistair, she drags up feelings a decade old</p>
            </blockquote>





	What If's

The night after adamant was a grim one. Despite the tavern being full, it was nearly silent, save Maryden singing wistful songs in the corner about the warden’s fall. 

 

Alistair wasn't there; he was gathering the last of his things and planning to be gone before the sunrise. No point in sticking around any longer, and the looks he got from the blonde dwarf frightened him, even if he couldn't tell if they were pity or hatred.

 

Cullen wasn't happy with how things had gone, he had known Hawke, maybe even called her a friend if things hadn't gone the way they had, and he was glad Alistair was leaving. 

 

They hadn't spoken to each other, not even a word, but the one time their eyes met across the war table Cullen _knew_ Alistair hadn't forgotten. He'd been there when the hero of Ferelden had found him in the tower, broken and terrified and yelling things he couldn't even remember now, but he remembered her hurt face as he yelled them. 

 

It had been ten years ago, another life for him, Leliana had been reminder enough of his past mistakes, with her tales of the brave Warden Amell, fighting dragons and saving lives. He had known the warden when she was just Amell. Loud laughter at dining room tables, always surrounded by friends. Everyone loved hearing her tell the stories she'd read in her books, listen to her tell jokes about a world she had never experienced. 

           

He had always found her fascinating, extraordinary, but it had taken him years to realize he wasn't just infatuated with her because she was off limits. He loved her, or at least wanted to be allowed to. 

 

_When a Mage isn't in their bed at 2am, it's usually a bad sign. Cullen knew it was her, knew he should wake up the Templars and tear apart the entire castle. But instead he did it alone, frantically, trying to find the missing girl before she turned into an abomination or jumped out a tower window._

 

_He did find her, asleep in the library, backed into a dark corner with a book over her face. Not a book of blood magic, but fairy tales. He picked the book up and smiled, a happy fairy tale about a princess trapped in a castle by an angry dragon, and saved by a gallant knight with yellow hair. But Cullen was not a knight that rescued princesses from towers. He was a Templar, an order than acted as the dragon.  But the mages were also not damsels in distress; they were dangerous and powerful and had the potential to turn into actual dragons themselves._

_But she had fallen asleep with thoughts of being carried away from her prison by a handsome knight in shining amour. Cullen didn't think himself particularly handsome, and his armor needed a good cleaning, but he carried her back to bed anyway._

 

 He'd been there at her harrowing a week later, when she broke the record and come out of the fade unscathed and smiling. 

 

He remembered her grin when she invited him to sleep with her, and her laughter as he ran away, terrified. He remembered the day she had left, head held high, being forced to choose between treason charges and becoming a warden, all because a friend had lied to her. 

 

Cullen told himself he was happy she was gone. No more temptation, everything would be easier now. But he missed her, missed her laugh and her voice, and her strong will he'd always known would get her into trouble. 

           

When he saw her again she wasn't laughing. Her eyes were sharp and she was covered in blood that was not hers. She was no longer a little girl who dreamed of risqué love affairs and being rescued from dragons, now she had to kill the dragons herself. 

 

She left him there curled on the floor like a frightened child, and went off to save his life, even after he had said what he said to her. He had thought her an illusion, another thing dangled in front of him to drive him to insanity or death, he said things to her he never would have said if he knew she was real, but he didn’t care. 

 

 Afterwards he was too angry to thank her, to angry to stay in that tower for another day.  His brothers were dead, killed by mages. There was nothing keeping him in that tower anymore, so he left. Went to Kirkwall, started over. 

 

He spent all his time in Kirkwall getting over what happened at the circle, telling himself it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t have known, couldn’t have stopped it, only died with them. And then Meredith went crazy, slaughtered mages in the street, and he knew he should have seen it coming, should have stopped her, this wasn't like the circle, he couldn't blame this on demons and blood mages. He'd been a bitter child and allowed Meredith to use insane force, let her drive good mages into the arms of demons out of desperation. He'd stood by and watched because of what had happened to him, because he was scared. But that was just another excuse, one ten years old and long dead. Kirkwall was his fault. Meredith was his fault. The war was as much his fault as Anders'. He wouldn't make the same mistakes again. 

 

The inquisition was his last first chance. Leliana never knew of his first love, and Varric didn’t make Cullen speak of Kirkwall unless he brought it up. He was happy; he could make a difference and finally do some good.

 

Kissing Trevelyan on the battlements was the stupidest thing he’d ever done, and the best. He wasn’t going to let her get away, he wasn’t a Templar anymore, he didn’t care that she was a mage; he was no longer an angry child who cursed all mages and ran from his feelings. 

 

His headaches and nightmares were still there, but so was she. So was their cause, and that was enough. He was content, he was happy.

 

From the top of his tower room, Cullen watched Alistair leave in the dead of night. He had learned of him and the hero of Ferelden while he was in Kirkwall, and didn’t know what to think. An ex-Templar and a mage, he had thought it crazy at the time, but now the mighty and powerful Herald of Andraste snored loudly behind him, his own love and very much a mage.

He loved her, of course he did, but that was because he’d seen her fight, seen her drive and compassion. He knew her; in a way he never got the chance to with Amell. If things had been different, if he hadn’t been a Templar and she a mage, if they hadn’t met when they were kids, if he had only said _yes_ \- everything could have been different.

 

“Alistair!” Cullen’s thoughts were cut short by a voice he had not heard in ten years.

 

Alistair turned around and dropped everything he was holding, and Cullen saw her, standing in the doorway of the main hall, illuminated by candlelight, looking twenty years older and exhausted. 

 

She dropped her pack and staff, and ran into the dark courtyard with a sound that somewhere between a laugh and a sob. 

 

She leapt off the stairs and he tried his best to catch her, but they ended up in a giggling crying heap on the ground, kissing and clutching at each other like they hadn’t seen each other in years, which was actually true. 

 

Cullen didn’t hate Alistair anymore. 

 

Varric and Leliana stood in the doorway, both smiling sadly. They knew Hawke's life had been the cost of this reunion, and there would be a much more somber event when Fenris arrived. 

 

The crying on the ground had turned to kissing, and Amell was straddling Alistair on the ground, pulling at his amour until Leliana yelled that there were soldiers awake, this is the courtyard, we have spare rooms, with beds, and privacy.

 

Alistair left his pack on the ground, choosing instead to carry Amell. She wrapped her legs around his stomach, and buried her hands in his hair and they both disappeared back into the great hall. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It was two days until she noticed him. Cullen was busy, much too busy to hide in his quarters until the Wardens moved on to Weisshaupt like he wanted to. She didn't emerge from her quarters the entire first day in Skyhold, Leliana had to have servants take her and Alistair meals. The second night, the lovers emerged and Leliana and Josephine organized an official celebration to honor the arrival of the Hero of Ferelden, and Cullen was required to be there by both his co-workers and the Inquisitor herself.

 

Trevelyan got two dances out of him before he claimed a headache and switched places with Dorian. The Wardens would be gone in a few days, everything would be comfortable again and there would be no reason to tell her about all these feelings he thought he’d left behind ten years ago. 

 

Cullen managed to sneak out the tavern under Josie and Leliana’s noses, but as he exhaled the nighttime air outside the tavern he knew he wasn’t alone. 

 

“Cullen Rutherford” her voice was so familiar to him, he’d heard it a thousand times, whenever he had judged someone for being a mage, whenever he looked at lyrium. The last time had been the night on the battlements, when he had kissed Trevelyan, and the Wardens’ voice had become hers. 

 

“Warden-Commander Amell.” He replied, as formally as possible.

 

“Care to join me for a walk?” she asked, pushing off from the side of the building she was leaning on. 

 

“I don’t think that would be appropriate Warden-Commander,” he answered.

 

“You’ve been avoiding me all night” she said “Trust me when I say it’s better to face your demons head on.”

 

“Are you saying you’re a demon, my lady?”

 

She smiled at that, and he followed her away from the noises of the tavern. 

 

The battlements were cold, but they were dressed in armor and furs. They sat side my side on the wall, with a foot of cold stone between them, so Cullen could only see her head.

 

He waited in silence for a few moments, and Cullen really hoped she didn’t expect him to speak first.

 

“Leliana’s been telling me stories,” she finally said, and Cullen froze up. Leliana knew _everything_

 

“Oh maker…” he sighed and she laughed.

 

“She told me you’re terrible at wicked grace. And the color of your underclothes.”

 

“I am never playing cards with them again." 

 

She laughed again and nodded. “I wouldn’t blame you. That was the only funny story about you, and she seemed rather curious as to why I was so interested. Which means she doesn’t know- _Leliana_ doesn’t know. That's quite impressive.”

 

“It wasn’t relevant to our cause. When we needed to get in touch with you, she knew how to do it. Our…” he paused, trying to think of what word could be used to describe what they were, what they had been. "-past, wasn’t something she needed to know.”

 

“Cullen I didn’t drag you up here to chastise, actually quite the opposite.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“When I- when _we_ were last in the circle, we didn’t exactly part on good terms, you said some rather unsavory things and-“

 

“I am sorry” Cullen cut her off, and couldn’t believe how good it felt to finally say those words. “I am so sorry, and I need you to know that I spent the next ten years regretting every word I said in that tower, regretting-“

 

She held up a hand to stop him.

 

“Cullen I _know_ you’re sorry. You don’t need to tell me, Leliana already did. Although not directly. You’re with a mage, you fight alongside them, only kill them if they try to kill you first. And you’re proving to the order that they can’t control you, not through orders and not through lyrium. I know it might sound strange, coming from someone who is your age, but I’m proud of you. When I left that tower, I hated you, hated what you wanted me to do. I thought you would have gone back to the order, continued hating mages until it ate you up.”

 

“I did, that’s exactly what I did. I transferred to Kirkwall, I didn’t just go back to the Templars, I was _there,_ there when Meredith gave the order to kill all the mages, I could have stopped this war before it began.”

 

“Varric told me you fought her, in the end”

 

“In the end”

 

“You could never have stopped this war. Only delayed it. The mages we’re always going to rebel.”

 

“I know” Cullen sighed, thinking of the stories his lover whispered to him the dead of night, stories of growing up in the circle, the unrest and tension that underlied every lesson, every forced chantry sermon, every meal where the templars stood watching.

 

They sat in silence for a few more moments before he spoke up.

 

“Looks like you got your knight in shining armor after all.” He said, and she snorted

 

“Quite the opposite actually” she corrected him. “Alistair is technically a prince, Maric’s bastard” she explained to Cullen’s surprised expression. “When Cailan died, everyone wanted him to marry Anora and take the throne. I rescued him from that, even killed a couple of dragons on the way. ”

 

“You didn’t want him to be king?”

 

“Of course I didn’t want him to, but he didn’t want to either, and Anora is more than capable. He does more good with the Wardens than he could ever do as a figurehead on the throne doing whatever Arl Eamon and Anora tell him to. The fact that we got to stay together was a bonus.”

 

“You love him?”

 

“With all my heart.”

 

Cullen couldn’t help but smile at that.

 

“She’s beautiful, you know” Amell couldn’t help but comment on Cullen’s own love life. 

 

“That’s my first thought, every morning.”

 

“She’s going to save the world.”

 

“That’s my second, less pleasant thought every morning.”

 

She laughed again and Cullen had to ask, had to ask the question that he’d been asking himself for so many years now. 

 

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened, if I had said yes?”

 

Alistair took that moment to stumble onto the battlements; stupid drunk and reciting something that sounded vaguely like poetry. The Inquisitor was holding him up, only slightly less drunk and grinning broadly.

 

“I found your husband, my lady,” she said, and Amell looked back at Cullen and smiled.

 

“Never” Amell said, standing up to take her husband off the Trevelyan's shoulder. 

 

“Nor do I” he called after her, being dragged towards his room by the girl he had said yes to, and Cullen was happy. 


End file.
